Cornell numbers wizard Max Wasserman has thrilled you with his firm grasp on math as it relates to sports. This might his best effort yet: Attempting to solving the unbalanced scheduling problem in MLB by instituting the RPI – which college basketball uses.

My biggest pet peeve is unfairness. Any sort of inequality in a competition really grinds my gears. This accounts for one of the 400 reasons I hate Last Comic Standing. As for sports, which are generally less rigged than Last Comic Standing, there are a few cases that reach a level of unfairness I can’t really ignore. No, I’m not talking about the lack of a cap in baseball or the overtime in the NFL. I’m talking about unbalanced scheduling. And the league that is the guiltiest of scheduling imbalance is Major League Baseball.

Baseball’s uneven scheduling should come as no surprise. It is the only major pro sports organization today with divisions of unequal size and one league that has more teams than the other. And with interleague play being such a limited part of the schedule, ridiculous matchups frequently manifest, like Baltimore and Arizona playing two home-and-home series last year. This results in some teams playing tougher schedules than others. But while schedule strength is accounted for in the NFL (albeit several spots down the list of tiebreakers), it is not in Major League Baseball. And it really should, especially when playoff races come down to one-game differences, like last season. If only there were some sort of formula that could evaluate a teams performance based on their record and schedule strength. Well my favorite sport, college basketball, has such a formula, the Ratings Percentage Index or RPI.

The NCAA uses the RPI formula in pretty much every sport they run. It gives them a standard to compare teams that almost always play completely dissimilar schedules. Using the RPI allows the NCAA to decide which teams to put in the tournament, which teams to leave out, and which 26-2 teams warrant a No. 8 seed because Karl Hobbs’ paranoia renders him unable to schedule any quality teams in non-conference play [remembers GW's 2006 season, punches wall].

Sure, using the RPI for Major League Baseball may sound silly, but it can be very accurate. Remember, it was George Mason’s high RPI (23 in late February) that helped them sneak into the NCAA Tournament in 2006. And had Davidson fallen in the SoCon tournament last season, many experts had suggested that their RPI (44 in early March), boosted by their tough non-conference schedule, would have carried them through.

Anyway, using the RPI formula (which is 25% win percentage, 50% opponents’ win percentage, and 25% opponents’ opponents’ win percentage) on the results of the 2007 Major League Baseball regular season (which took a loooong time to organize), the teams are ranked as such:

2007 mlb rpi

[SOS = Strength of Schedule = 67% opponents' win percentage + 33% opponents' opponents' win percentage. Division winners are highlighted in dark colors (blue for AL, orange for NL). Wild card winners are highlighted in light colors (blue for AL, orange for NL).]

Once you pass the glut of American League teams that dominate the top of this list, you’ll notice that the National League team with the greatest RPI is the Padres. And as you know, the Padres failed to make the playoffs after tying the Rockies for second in the NL West behind the D-backs and losing the wild card tiebreaker when Matt Holliday’s foot came close enough to the plate for a “gimme.€ But not only is the Padres RPI greater than Colorado’s, but both teams beat out Arizona. And when you adjust the formula to add weight for road wins and home losses, the Padres only increase their lead in RPI. Why is that?

Well, you’ll notice that San Diego has the greatest strength of schedule of the three NL West rivals. And when you look at the out-of-division schedules of those teams, you’ll see why. The number of games each team played against out-of-division opponents in 2007 are in the table below.

nl west 2007 opponents

The Padres played more games than the others against the NL Central champion Cubs, who had a high RPI for an NL team. In exchange, the Diamondbacks played more games against the Pirates, dead last in RPI. But the big difference came in interleague play. While San Diego didn’t have to play a series with the AL Wild Card Yankees, they did play two home-and-home series with the tough Mariners, fifth in the RPI. Meanwhile, the Rockies had their difficult Yankees series counterbalanced by three games against the not-at-all-good Royals. And as I mentioned earlier, Arizona got an extra series with the Orioles, or as I call them, Angelos and Demons.

Now, I understand that the interleague schedule imbalances will always occur due to interleague rivalries. The Cardinals will usually have a slight advantage over the Cubs because they get six games against the Royals instead of six against the White Sox. Those imbalances can be solved if interleague was either expanded or eliminated altogether. After all, baseball got along for most of its history without it. But even if you think that the interleague system is fine the way it is, you can’t ignore the fact that San Diego and Seattle are not rivals. So why do they have to be scheduled as such? Unlike in college sports, pro teams have no control of their own schedules. It should be up to Major League Baseball to make everything fair.

Granted, the schedule imbalances shown may have resulted in only a slight difference in RPI. But remember that all San Diego needed was one more win to make the playoffs. Had the schedules been more balanced, they could have been the ones to get swept by the Red Sox. What makes me say that? Of all the NL playoff teams, the one with the greatest RPI made the World Series. And of all the teams in Major League Baseball, the one with the top RPI won the World Series.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, here’s the current RPI standings in the 2008 season, through games of Sunday, June 1st, with division and wild card leaders highlighted.

2008 RPI